3way
by tami3
Summary: For Riku, Kairi, and Sora, there's more than one way to be together.


3-way  
  
"Like spit." Sora said. The other two nodded with grim approval, awarding him the points for the most noted interpretation for the silt-like flesh they had all tousled with their tongues before gagging it out onto sand. Each gob had flipped over on the gilt-beige grains, coating themselves with grit until they looked like shelled mussels breaded for the pan. Their sizes spoke of expectations from before. Enthusiastic, over the anticipated saccharine exoticism of a new experience; big. Reserved, apprehensive over the obligatory romanticism before chancing a shackle upon her wrist; little. Too drawn to melancholy over basic angst to be distracted from his moodiness, even over this; natural to moderate, and the only piece to have been spat back into a palm before being discarded.  
  
"Cold spit." Kairi moaned, pressing her clammy face to the trunk of a tree grimed by coconut crabs, to relieve the chill. She couldn't tell if the pulsating was from the blood attempting to flush her cheeks, or if the "magic" of the fruit had awakened the life energy of all things interlocking itself with her own existence. "A bucket of it. And you feel. . . it was like drinking someone else's spit!  
  
It faced no rebuff, or the reply that could dispense the prize of acknowledgement for a good follow-up to Sora's creative appraisal. She was granted instead the consolation gift of a very concerned sideways glance, albeit one striking a tentative balance between mature scorn and plain indifference, from Riku. It was a nicely constructed gesture, with his arms in diamond shape as the hands laid flat on the back of his head (almost as if he were pantomiming Sora's laid back casualty.  
  
He'd been the one who had handled both of them with a look of jaded assessment on his face, after he'd flung his piece in temperamental disgust as far as he could into the ocean. It had bobbed, yellow star bright, on the currants with jaunty drama until it was dashed out of sight by scolding waves. Then he'd kicked the other two chunks that had slipped out of his friend's hands, down the side of their sea borne plateau, watching with an idle sense of waste as they bounced ever higher off the sides of the craggy cliff, like sunny rubber meteors.  
  
Sora and Kairi had dropped them, in their inattentive displeasure over the taste; Riku never missed anything, not even contempt for bad food. It was one of his talents. So he'd *had* to get rid of those, too.  
  
Then he'd sauntered with exasperation over to Kari's semi-recumbent form, where she'd crept with miserable anxiety over to a graduated ledge, to throw up. He'd snatched up the antennae strand bangs away from her mouth and wrought them around his fingers as she retched, weeping tears that had nothing to do with sadness, but couldn't be helped because they were a joint package with the vomiting.  
  
When she was done, he'd done his best to fix her mussed magenta hair with the awkward large hands of a teenaged boy, but didn't very well because that was a girl's task. Kairi smoothed it down herself, sitting still to empty her thoughts of nausea, while Riku fetched a piece of sugarcane from the remnants of their lunch for Sora to chew until the revolted green of his face drained away. Sora gnashed the cube into woody splinter pulp, pushing the tangy juice down his throat before he tossed the fiber mash into the sack they'd brought for their garbage.  
  
"It was awful. . ." Sora mumbled, blushing from the weird theory they'd tried out without thinking about the aftereffects, because they'd said what was science if you weren't willing to take a few risks? "Maybe we shouldn't have tried it with so many people."  
  
"Does it matter?" Riku intoned flatly, too disappointed to be his usual sangfroid, flippant self. He couldn't even give his optimistic smirk. " We'll never try it again."  
  
"I was much worse for me. I could tell." Kairi was upset; what was wrong with her, to react in such a severe manner when the boys hadn't? Was it because she was a girl, and had been more enchanted by the red-thread bind postulate? But she hadn't been . . .  
  
"Maybe you're allergic" Sora suggested the same time Riku said : "That's because it wasn't anything to you."  
  
And they turned their heads at each other in unison, and gave each other quick looks or wariness. But they twisted out of each other's gaze soon enough.  
  
"Riku, you didn't care." It was slightly defensive, but the interpretation of Sora's low words could be waved.  
  
"Either?" Riku added for him, hypothetically. Then he muttered, only to be semi-incoherent. "That's because I'm always alone, anyways."  
  
"What?" Kairi and Sora asked together.  
  
"Nothing. So, are we-all- together for the rest of our lives now?"  
  
"We didn't swallow!" Kairi protested, simply.  
  
"We shared it." Sora said thoughtfully. "Even if we didn't eat it. So maybe."  
  
"I don't need a stupid fruit to keep my friends." Riku announced stoutly with a glare, and Kairi and Sora gave him somber nods, taking into context Riku's mature perspective. Still, different strains of wistfulness, all in shades of blue (Aqua, Periwinkle, Lavender.) showered attention upon the remaining 3 stars in coconut formation, vivid beacons against regal green fronds. It took full seconds for them to turn away.  
  
Riku and Sora picked up the wooden swords besides the picnic basket and whacked each other's with excellent composure. Kairi took turns being a cheerleader for both of them, laughing at her own goofy improvisations of what the techniques were called as she shouted them out with encouragement. They couldn't help striking the Papou tree accidentally several times.  
  
* * *  
  
Riku pulled another one down; it was the biggest one of the three left, but no one would miss it. They thought that the fruits were loosely attached, and dropped into the ocean when they weren't looking. Then they'd float away and seed on some other island, one without a legend about the geometric wonder. It made sense, because the number of stars on the branches decreased steadily as soon as they became ripe each year. But in truth, someone always took them, one per day.  
  
That someone was him.  
  
He sat himself on the swing seat shape of the trunk, and took a bite. His eyes drooped as the "spit" flavor of the fruit tipped over in abundance over his tongue, the routine of this daily trial triggering an endorphin- like reaction in Riku's body. He stretched out on the tree as if it were a couch, his heartbeat winding down.  
  
"It's always the same. I've always been lonely," He said quietly to his phantom. It was as if he were stranded; no one was out. Not Tidus, Sora, Kairi, Wakka, or Selphie. He was alone, and this was his impenetrable retreat, with no possibility of desecration.  
  
He ate the entire fruit slowly, this one almost the size of his hand with the fingers outstretched. He pushed the pit, an amber marble, out from between his pursed lips when he was done.  
  
He took it and smashed it flat with a rock against a small boulder, like an apothecary grinding herbs for a remedy. He made extra sure to kill germ, the embryo, by piercing it with a sharp point from the stone; he didn't ever want it to sprout. 


End file.
